Faith Is Not A Virtue

Let me preface everything I’m about to say with this clarification: this is not about mocking the intelligence of believers. I was as devout a believer as they come for many years, and I certainly don’t consider myself to be lacking in intelligence. Rather, the argument that I would like to make is that the teachings of the Bible can make otherwise intelligent people, believe less than intelligent things [1].

Right from the beginning, the Bible issues a stark warning on the dangers of knowledge and wisdom:

“For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. — Genesis 3:5–6

What happens next is that God — who put both the tree and the talking serpent there (arguably a case of entrapment) — announces the fall of mankind, and throws Adam and Eve out of paradise. Adam of course blames Eve for the whole fiasco, so our loving Heavenly Father singles out the entire female gender for special punishment. He decides that childbirth should become exceedingly painful and dangerous, and declares that men should rule over women — giving the divine thumbs up for the next 6000 years of men subjugating women [2].

All that because Eve desired to be wise.

The Bible is full of stories of God’s dramatic and miraculous intervention, but those stories were invariably composed long after events they purport to describe. It’s easy to invent a fantastical past but it invites an obvious question about the present — why are things different now? Why aren’t seas being parted when God’s people are stuck? Why aren’t the sun and moon being stopped in the sky when the faithful need a little extra time? Why did this same God do nothing to prevent the Holocaust?

It’s no coincidence that both Testaments were largely composed during times of immense hardship for God’s would-be elect. The bulk of the Old Testament was composed shortly after much of the Jewish population was taken into captivity in Babylon, and almost all of the New Testament was written after the destruction of Jerusalem and the slaughter of a million people. In both cases the message came to people who were at their lowest and had suffered greatly. In both cases the Biblical authors could paint the present suffering as divine punishment and describe a glorious past that would return if people followed their commands.

What to do though when the faithful actually do begin keeping the commands you’ve given them? Eventually God has to deliver on his side of the deal. If the people have given up bacon don’t they at least deserve a small miracle? Maybe a make a blind man see or heal a child’s leprosy? The New Testament authors concocted a new line of defence…

Ordinarily, intelligent people demand evidence to back up wild claims. If someone says that they can transform water into wine — an intelligent response is “ok show me”. If instead a person responds with “sure I’ll take your word for it, and from now on I’ll worship you” then we think them a bit simple. Of course, thanks to cold hard reality which prevents H2O molecules from instantaneously becoming delicious wine and dead people from reanimating — “take our word for it” is exactly what the authors of the Bible require of us [3].

So they took blind acceptance and turned it into a desirable virtue:

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” — John 20:29

… gave it the nice name of “faith”:

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. — Hebrews 11:1

… and promoted it as a lifestyle choice:

We live by faith, not by sight. — 2 Corinthians 5:7

Children are especially good at blindly accepting what they are told. When I was a young child I earnestly believed that an old man would sometimes climb down our chimney to deliver presents, a magical rabbit would occasionally hide chocolate eggs in our garden, and that if I put a lost tooth under my pillow, a fairy would replace it with 50p. I believed these absurdities because my parents told me so and because as a child, I didn’t know any better.

Haven’t seen any miracles lately? Not to worry, you just need to become more childlike:

At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants — Matthew 11:25

… though you’d better not delay or you might end up in hell:

And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. — Matthew 18:3

Another role model besides children are fools:

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong — 1 Corinthians 1:26–27

The message is clear — if you’re not experiencing God and his miracles today, then you are thinking too much. Perhaps you can try un-reading some books or banging your head off a wall. Heaven is not for people who ask questions [4].

There was a point when I was at my most evangelical when I pondered on becoming a creationist. It wasn’t that I was particularly swayed by the arguments of people like my Religious Education school teacher who made us watch a video about how people and dinosaurs lived side by side. It just sounded so virtuous to believe something so foolish. Surely with all the mockery one was inevitably going to receive, the reward in Heaven must be amazing?

Losing my faith was in many ways traumatic. My worldview collapsed, my hope in the afterlife disappeared, and since my social circle was pretty much my church… well at least I now I had more time for reading. But I also felt a new and profound sense of intellectual freedom, and a re-awakening of a lost appetite for knowledge. In the time since, I’ve been tearing through books on science like they’re going out of fashion. Whereas previously some topics were off limits — now nothing is. There is no dangerous knowledge and nothing virtuous about childish ignorance.

Eve, you made the right choice.

Notes

[1] There is some evidence that religiosity and intelligence are negatively correlated but we’ll leave that for another post, and assume that I and any religious readers are exceptions. I have a PhD if that counts for anything.

[2] The alternative explanation is that a group of misogynist priests wrote Genesis and the rest of the Torah sometime around 500BCE to justify their power over the Jewish people. The reader may decide if that is more or less plausible than talking serpents and magic trees.

[3] At this point I can hear the protesting of the few charismatic readers who have made it this far and are adamant that miracles do still happen today. Well I might be an atheist these days, but I can still babble incoherently and call it “speaking in tongues”.

[4] There is is much veneration of wisdom in books like Job, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, but interestingly all of those books appear to have origins outside of orthodox Judaism. For example, Ecclesiastes was almost certainly not written by King Solomon, but rather composed in the 3rd century BC, borrowing ideas from the Persians.